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10 most important works of the decade: No. 1, Guitar Hero

It seems only fitting that, for a decade in which traditional media struggled with new competitors, the Most Important Work of the Decade, as voted by our critics and readers, is not a movie, or book, or TV show, or play, but rather a video game.

It seems only fitting that, for a decade in which traditional media struggled with new competitors, the Most Important Work of the Decade, as voted by our critics and readers, is not a movie, or book, or TV show, or play, but rather a video game. Guitar Hero won overwhelming support from both groups of voters – it earned the most nods from Star critics and the third-most from readers, trailing only blockbusters The Dark Knight and The Da Vinci Code. A special thanks to the hundreds of readers who took the time to vote.

When it launched, even the musicians must have thought it was a joke. The idea of a video game that simulated performance using fake plastic instruments was an insult to the art of rock. If you had to explain the concept to someone living under a rock, they would say that it would never work. Of course, anyone who's given it a shot knows otherwise.

This has been the decade of the music-rhythm game, and it all started with a little thing called Guitar Hero. Actually, it started long before, with games like PaRappa The Rapper, Beatmania, Frequency, Rez, Samba da Amigo and even Dance Dance Revolution. But those were the influential indie bands that never broke big. Guitar Hero was the chart-topping star, the game that figured things out, packaged them correctly and exploded into the mainstream.

It launched in 2005, and the first editions only featured cover versions of songs – bands were hesitant to let their music be toyed with. But Guitar Hero hit it big with college kids, laying the groundwork for what was to follow. Now, GH is an influential entertainment colossus.

The game became a new and necessary revenue stream to musicians. It helped kick off a resurgence of classic rock's popularity among a new generation of fans, breathing new life into older bands while also embracing new groups. One holdout, The Beatles, took the music-game plunge this year, with the Beatles Rock Band, while Aerosmith was one of the first bands to have a fully themed game around their music. Beyond the bands that that have been included in the packaged versions of the game – which include Nirvana, Jane's Addiction and The Beastie Boys – is the downloadable content of the game, which includes full albums from The Who, The Pixies and many more.

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For the video-game business, Guitar Hero ushered in a major boom. Its meteoric risespawned Rock Band and expanded to a full band kit including drums and a microphone. The whole package cost almost $200, yet still flew off the shelves. Such sales told the industry that if a game was good enough – remember, in the '90s, $200 was a threshold price for a console – people would buy it. The game itself was a blockbuster – Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock became the first single game ever to surpass $1 billion in sales. And Guitar Hero proved that accessories and peripherals were the next big growth area – it built an appetite for things like Wii Fit and the motion controls that are going to the big thing next year.

For purists, well, despite some initial criticism – local jazz and blues club the Rex once advertised "Come here to see real Guitar Heroes play" – studies have shown the game has actually fostered a renewed interest in music education.

Most important, for the public, there's the fact that Guitar Hero is unadulterated fun. Its creators took a simple formula – an update of the classic game Simon (see colour, hit button) – and let those without any musical talent understand for at least a moment what it's like to be Mick Jagger or Gwen Stefani.

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